


Go Out in Style

by scuttlingclaws



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, pov: it's the year of our lord two thousand and twenty one and you're still jeanmarco trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29168520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlingclaws/pseuds/scuttlingclaws
Summary: All that remained were the promises he made to the ashes gripped in his clenched fist.
Relationships: Marco Bott/Jean Kirstein
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	Go Out in Style

**Author's Note:**

> hi hello, if you're only watching the anime this WILL have spoilers!! it's meant to take place in manga chapter 127 xoxo

For the past four years, Jean had imagined that Marco had gone out in a blaze of glory, sacrificing himself for the greater good. He had seen the man’s heroics with his very own eyes, Marco risking his life when Jean’s 3D maneuvering gear had broken and he was at the mercy of titans. But here he was, sitting around a campfire idly chit-chatting with the ones who killed Marco. The ones who murdered him; stole his gear and left him for dead. Jean didn’t care who was the one who ordered the killing and who was the one to rip off his gear as he plead for them to please, please talk it out. A bloodstain was a bloodstain, no matter where it may fall. 

The blood on his knuckles failed to bring him any sort of relief. Nor did the feeling of his boot connecting with Gabi instead of Reiner. For years the decomposing body of Marco Bodt appeared behind closed eyelids, dangling ahead of him as he slept. Now a new image could haunt him, the sight of Marco tearfully begging for his life as the three infiltrators watched him be devoured. Jean screwed his eyes tightly shut, clamping his hands over his ears.

He died a meaningless death. The one person who believed in Jean from the start was gone and for little reason. Jean wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t as unaware as he was sure the other members of the 104th Training Corps thought he was. For God’s sake, his own mother went about telling the others in the mess hall about how he was rough around the edges. But no matter how many times Marco was pricked and poked and cut by Jean’s bristling demeanor he stayed with him. He believed in him. Marco made him want to be a better man. No, Marco _did_ make him into a better man.

If Marco hadn’t died in Trost, would he still have joined the Scout Regiment? As easy as it would have been to say yes, of course, he would after seeing the devastation in Trost, he wasn’t completely sure if that was really the answer. Jean had never experienced such a personal loss until he saw the unceremonious slump of a forgotten corpse and the scornful way the nurse asked him to just give her a name and move on. As if all the lives that were lost that day had no meaning, no right to be remembered or mourned. 

He was weak. Marco was right. He never desired peace nor tranquility for humanity when he joined the Training Corps. All he wanted to do was secure a safe, cushy life within the innermost walls and, by God, he still wished he could throw it all away and have that with Marco by his side. But it didn’t matter now. It didn’t matter what could have been or what should have been. All that remained were the promises he made to the ashes gripped in his clenched fist.

Marco Bodt went out not with a bang, but with a pleading whisper.

**Author's Note:**

> the thought for this fic came to me when I was listening to "If Nobody Moves Nobody Will Get Hurt" by The Paper Chase. Someday This Could All be Yours is a phenomenal album that I'd highly recommend :)


End file.
